Inside Team Sky

by Walsh, David

  Froome was hungry, he needed some sugar and soon.

  And so they hit Alpe d’Huez for the second time. The leading trinity have been reunited. Moser, Riblon and van Garderen will battle it out for the stage.

  On the corner where the ‘FROOME DOPÉ’ libel hangs, there is yet more chaos. The first Team Sky car squeezes through the mob. The syringe gang have entered their camper van and changed into medical scrubs ready to cause more chaos when Team Sky come past. Somebody takes the rather brave decision to throw themselves against the door of the camper van, trapping the phoney medics inside. The one escaping member of the group is running around outside with a bucket of water.

  The second Team Sky car approaches through the churning sea of people. Dave Brailsford is inside. People are shouting to shut the windows. People are shouting abuse. People are shouting. The bucket of water comes through the window. The car goes on. There are scuffles on the road behind. The gendarmerie begin to take an interest.

  Contador has been hauled back to the bunch which is really pushing on now. Richie Porte takes a turn at the front. Froome is behind him. Then Froome attacks.

  He doesn’t go with a swoosh, though. Just grinds it out and the serious men behind him are having none of it. Contador, Quintana and Joaquim Rodríguez go with him. Now, now, Mr Froome.

  Mr Froome is undeterred. He hopes his little attack has seduced his rivals into thinking he is still going well, and that he can leave them whenever he wishes. Bluffing isn’t just for the poker table. No one reads that Froome isn’t himself; he’s not going to hold up a sign that says glycogen depletion.

  A roar is building up ahead and rolling down the mountain like a wave so that the whole climb is one big noise. The roar is for the battle for the stage. Van Garderen is ahead again. Jens Voigt, forty-one, the heroic old breakaway lad of the Tour, is second! Riblon and Moser haven’t given up.

  And Froome goes again. Maybe the noise is sucking the judgement from his brain or maybe he reacts to the need to do it to them before they do it to him. If he attacks, they can’t know how weak he feels. This time he loses Contador, but Quintana won’t be shaken. The Colombian seems the most comfortable of all on this second ascent of l’Alpe.

  This is the sport of our childhood, the Tour as told around the fireside on a winter’s evening. Contador is crumbling before our eyes. Richie Porte and Alejandro Valverde are trying to get across to join Froome and Quintana. Joaquim Rodríguez has succeeded in that already.

  Froome is now looking as he feels. Wasted. Porte makes it across, which cheers Froome because he’s going to need his friend. Up the road nearer the summit van Garderen is pushing on for the stage.

  At this point amid the heave, Nico Portal in the team car is too far from Froome for their two-way radio to work. Having missed an opportunity to refuel, the race leader is becoming hypoglycaemic – extremely low on sugar. Seven kilometres from the summit, Portal had worked his way through some of the race cars when he hears Froome’s voice on the radio.

  ‘Nico. Sugar, sugar, I need sugar.’

  Portal still has some more overtaking to do and by the time he gets into position behind Froome, it is too late to legally give the rider the sugar-rich gels he needs.

  Froome makes lots of mistakes but he seldom makes the same mistake twice. Five years ago he arrived at the foot of Alpe d’Huez in his first Tour, a race for which he had only a ten-day crash course to prepare. The weeks before the Tour started, being quite sure he wasn’t going to be selected anyway, Froome had gone home to Africa following the death of his mother, Jane. He hadn’t been home in some time and he stayed a while after the funeral. When he came back to Europe he got the word. ‘Prepare.’

  He was riding for Barloworld, a South African team which was disintegrating by the mile. Their leader, Moisés Dueñas, had tested positive for EPO after the Stage Four time trial and as soon as the result was announced the French police raided his room in Tarbes in the Pyrenees. They found a one-man pharmacy and took Dueñas away in handcuffs.

  Froome commented that it was best if he never saw Dueñas again as he would risk getting arrested for assault if he did. Then two other Barloworld riders crashed into each other and withdrew. By the time the Tour hit Alpe d’Huez, Barloworld were four.

  Still, Alpe d’Huez. Froome isn’t steeped in the lore of the Tour but he knows the places where a man might leave his mark. Froome tucked himself in ambitiously behind a group containing many of the race favourites including the eventual winner, Carlos Sastre. At the bottom of l’Alpe Sastre went for it with a sudden and aggressive attack. Froome was on the wheel of Denis Menchov, but when it all went off Froome found he had no response.

  He had seen Alpe d’Huez as a venue where he might make a name for himself. He’d latched onto the leaders’ group ready to take up the gauntlet. In the thrill of it all, he had forgotten to take food on board. In fact when the team car beckoned him with a fistful of energy gels he waved them away politely.

  ‘I blew completely. I had no sugars left and lost a lot of time. That taught me a lesson.’

  This isn’t like that, but it’s still not good. Froome and Richie Porte have an exchange now. Greater love hath no domestique than that which will slow down on Alpe d’Huez, wait for the team car to come alongside and get some food for his leader who has just, to use the term favoured by academic nutrionists, ‘bonked’. Porte gets the energy gels. While he is delivering Froome service, Quintana attacks.

  Can a gentleman not have his afternoon tea?

  Froome doesn’t panic. This was to be expected. Letting Richie Porte drop back as Nairo Quintana burst forward was a game of percentages which Froome got exactly right. He remembered the lesson.

  Ahead it is all delirium. Riblon is closing on van Garderen as they grind it out. They pass the two-kilometres-to-go sign. A little way up the road the Frenchman heroically overtakes the American. Not bad for a cheese-eating surrender monkey, cry thousands of his countrymen. Riblon just keeps getting faster. Or van Garderen keeps getting slower. Either way it’s going to be a French win on l’Alpe.

  Van Garderen comes in second. Moser third, and Quintana takes fourth after a mature display of climbing nous. Joaquim Rodríguez, then Froome and Richie Porte come home together. Froome and Porte will be docked 20 seconds each for the energy gel business.

  Nico Portal wants to appeal the penalty because the team were victim to such bad luck with the car. Froome tells him to drop it, explaining that if Richie hadn’t broken the rule, the time loss might have been a minute or a minute and a half. Twenty seconds was a price worth paying. Portal shakes his head in wonder, for such maturity is not common in an athlete, let alone one bearing the pressure of the yellow jersey in the Tour.

  This has been a strange Tour. The Clouded Yellow butterfly that Team Sky’s media chief Chris Haynes had seen in Corsica had followed us all the way to the Alps. On this pivotal stage, Froome had really struggled, yet he climbed off his bike at the finish on Alpe d’Huez with his lead extended. Contador is over five minutes behind now.

  Two stages left before the ride to Paris.

  There were no recriminations about the accident that fried the electronics in the team car and could have hurt the team even more than it did. Mario Pafundi felt it was his responsibility because he hadn’t done enough to help David Rozman and Marko Dzalo make a better decision about the ice.

  ‘On a day when everyone says it’s going to rain on Alpe d’Huez, you don’t need ten thousand ice cubes. But it’s my responsibility, I should have given them that information.’

  That evening, Neil Thompson, the mechanic provided by Jaguar to be there if anything should go wrong with any of the cars, worked on the messed-up electronics from 6pm to midnight. ‘If you can imagine pouring a litre of water down the back of your television while it is on, that’s the problem I was trying to sort out.’

  This is Thompson’s second Tour with Sky. Before this, he had no interest in cycling. Football is probably his game. He ma
nages his son’s team and when he says they went through last season without winning, he wants you to understand he could never see sport as a matter of life and death. But this car, he badly wanted it back on the road. Thought he had it, all those flashing lights went away, but then late in the night, a warning light for the air-suspension system came back to haunt him and he knew he was struggling. He went to bed worried, woke up worried, and when he went to the car first thing in the morning, he threw up, anxiety churning away until his stomach could take no more.

  ‘I know it shouldn’t matter so much, but I want this team to win. We needed the car back in the race and now I’m probably going to have to pull it out.’

  You can tell the man’s heart is breaking. These are people he never wants to let down.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘At Team GB, Rod Ellingworth was his [Cav’s] coach and confidant and had worked with him since he had been a teenager on the national team. Rod’s a moral and ethical rock, immune to celebrity or wealth, and I have no doubt in my mind that he is one of the main reasons for his success.’

  David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

  This will be the third and final time on this Tour that Dave Brailsford will address a general assembly of the team.

  On the evening before the first stage in Corsica, he gathered the staff on the team bus. He spoke to them, photographed them and asked what they wanted to be able to say when looking back on the photo in six months’ time. Two weeks on, he spoke in the team hotel at Orange after Chris Froome’s spectacular victory on Mont Ventoux. Now it is the evening before the ceremonial ride into Paris. The riders and staff are gathered outside the Hotel Novel La Mamma in Annecy and Brailsford once again has the floor.

  Respect from staff transcends the fact that he is boss. Through the near four weeks of the race, he has spoken easily to everyone and is perhaps the most up-beat person in the team. Any doubts he has had about the team or about the way the support staff were doing their jobs were never expressed loosely. More importantly in terms of the ambience in the team, his authority is never used to create fear and tension. Everyone understands that if someone is not doing their job, they won’t be with the team the following season. Gone before anyone even realised they were in trouble. This isn’t a problem, just a fact of life in Team Sky.

  Anyway, now is not the time to worry about that. The job has been done. Again. Two Tour victories in four years. Not bad for a man who said his ambition for the team was to win the race within five. Back then the target seemed too ambitious. But here he is, making another victory speech to staff and riders. The intention had been to have this celebration before dinner but, it was pointed out, the mechanics were still working on the bikes outside.

  Rather than the mechanics leaving their station, everyone is directed outside onto Avenue de France and glasses of champagne are passed around on the pavement. While cars whizz past, it somehow seems right that Brailsford’s second Tour de France victory speech is delivered not only among the riders, and those who care for them, but the mechanics’ labours of love as well, the carbon-fibre steeds that have rolled all this way.

  ‘For you to come here as the favourite,’ he says, directing his first comments towards the champion-elect, ‘and to build yourself up from last November to the point where you’ve come into the race as favourite, was a pretty special thing to do. But I think then to arrive as a favourite, put extra pressure on you; the way that you’ve handled that throughout this last three weeks, has been immense, you know. And credit to you.

  ‘But also I think the fact that you decided to take a dive in the neutralised section of the first stage. I thought, “Fucking hell, they haven’t started racing yet” and “Chute! Chute! Chute! Froome. Froome.” That was a bit of a worry.

  ‘And I think from there, going through Corsica, I think we obviously had G [Thomas] and Yogi [Ian Stannard], who had both crashed, which was a big worry. And G got a photograph of his fracture, don’t know if anybody’s seen it? He’s a bit shy about it all, but if you ask him nicely he will show you!2

  ‘But, you know, credit to you two obviously for battling through and I think when it came into Nice, and I think the team time trial was a brilliant performance from everybody, it really was a fantastic performance. And for you [Thomas] to get your arse from that start ramp down to the Promenade [des Anglais].That performance set us up. It really did. A brilliant performance.

  ‘Onto Ax 3 Domaines, Pete [Kennaugh] your first mountain stage in a Grand Tour. You know that day, I thought as a team, was probably one of the best team performances we’ve ever had. It was an absolutely textbook performance. The way that you took it over that Col de Pailhères, the way that Richie [Porte] then took it up, you brought Quintana back and then the way that you took over from there, it was off the scale. That was phenomenal.

  ‘And then of course the next day, I think Pete decides to chuck himself down a ditch in the morning. And that pretty much changed, in many respects, I think that morning the way that, you weren’t there, and then Richie you were there having to do that little bit more, and then Froomey finds himself isolated on his own. I think it’s the first time in eighteen months that any team, or any rival in this race, has gone, “Actually, it’s only a little chance, but we might have a chance,” you know? And I think your performance on that day, Froomey, was unbelievable. And Pete diving down the ditch I think changed the nature of this race for the rest of the race. Because from that day on, this race . . .’

  ‘He lost his Oakleys, did he tell you about that?’ chimes in G Thomas, to cackles of laughter. ‘His Oakleys, he still hasn’t got them back.’

  Brailsford resumes: ‘If you hadn’t scrambled back up that ditch, quick as you did, the whole race would have gone on past without knowing you were down there, and while it would have been a real shame for the team it would have been a bit quieter. But actually when you think about it, everybody started attacking from that point on, and where we’re thinking [five days later], we’ve got to the crosswind section. And I think Froomey, you made the decision, to me the decision of this race, when you were caught in no-man’s-land, where Cav got the hand-sling to get onto the group in front, instead of going you sat up and you went back to the group, and, okay, you lost a minute, but actually going back to the group and riding with the team, and all of you lot sticking together, that was the decision of the Tour for me.

  ‘Because if you’d tried to go and blown there, we could have been in big trouble. And I think that day, more than anything, showed that if we stick together as a team, and yes you manage your efforts . . . You know it wasn’t a great situation, but actually it was a brilliant decision that we made there. As you guys said, it showed what we can do when we stick together as a team.

  ‘So moving on from there, I think then you got stronger and stronger and stronger. I think, David [López], you got much, much stronger through this race, and credit to you. And where’s Kosta? Kosta, you’ve been the same, you’ve been great through the Alps. I think we were all thinking about the Alps going, “Phwoar, it’s going to be full on here.” We came into it and actually through the Alps you’ve been the strongest team. By far. Contador, you’ve reduced him to attacking on descents. And that was because you stuck together as a team; you know, it was an absolute privilege to watch.

  ‘Richie, your individual time trial, on the first individual time-trial day, to run third having had a bit of a setback on one day and then come out and shown everybody where you’re at. To me you’re a . . . Obviously Froomey won the race, but in actual fact you’re the second best rider in this race, and everybody can see that, you know? Credit to you, anyway. And of course then it’s all made possible by everybody, all the staff, we all know how hard they work. To all the staff, well done. Nico, thirty-four years old, youngest DS [directeur sportif] ever to win the Tour de France. That takes some doing, you know.’

  ‘And the best looking,’ says Kennaugh.

  Brailsford again, ‘And he prom
ises next year he’s gonna speak English! But anyway, where’s Servais? Do your thing. Here we go, Froomey.’

  Servais Knaven, the second directeur sportif, takes over.

  ‘READY? One . . . Two . . . All together.’

  Everyone joins in: ‘OoooooOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!’

  One afternoon, Dave Brailsford had tried to explain to me the particular, almost unique, contribution Rod Ellingworth made to Team Sky. He spoke of the three hands of a clock: the hour hand, the minute hand and the second hand. Most plans are based on the second hand – what do I need to do this evening/tomorrow? Some people can also make plans for the short to medium term, the minute hand. ‘This is where I will be six weeks from now.’ And a few work off the hour hand. ‘This is what I’m planning to do twelve months from now.’

  ‘What is very difficult,’ said Brailsford, ‘is to find someone who can work off the three hands at the same time and plan for the short, medium and long term. Especially when you’re at the Tour de France, because this race just consumes you and you’re thinking, “What do we need to do now? How long is Froomey going to have to spend at the finish today, how long before he’s back at the team hotel?”

  ‘Rod can be in the middle of this race, dealing with all he has to deal with and he’s still planning for the medium and long term. Very few people can do this, especially when they’re in the middle of something as demanding as the Tour de France.’

  I thought it was a generous tribute to Ellingworth but found it hard to believe. Whose mind is not consumed by this race to the exclusion of everything else? Ellingworth’s. For, once Brailsford had drawn attention to it, I couldn’t stop noticing how Rod’s mind worked.

  On the first rest day, a week and a half into the race, I encountered him as he walked by the sea at La Baule in Brittany. ‘I’ve just been thinking about Pete [Kennaugh],’ he said. ‘I mean he’s young, in his first Tour, he’s been brilliant for the team so far. And I’ve been looking at his programme for after the Tour. It’s too hard. We need to change it and put him in less demanding races, because this race is going to take a lot out of him and if he’s pushed too hard after the Tour, we could do more damage than good.’